A few nights ago, I was in charge of the remote for a while and decided to see if there was anything on television that I wanted to watch. I proceeded to the lowest channel and went up from there on a mission of discovery. Oh, yeah, don’t they have a channel by that name? Yes, they do, but back to the story: After about ten minutes I reached the limit of my available channels without finding one thing on that I wanted to watch. Why, you ask?
That question occurred to me as well, so I decided to go on a mission of discovery. Whoops, that channel again! Anyway, I proceeded to make a list of every program that was on, and I assigned each program to a specific category or genre. For example, I began with comedy and ended with westerns, keeping them in alphabetical order to make my little research project that much easier.
So, back to channel two I went, armed with pen and paper this time. After going through the entire tier of channels again, I looked at the results to see if I could discover why I wasn’t able to find something on I wanted to watch. Here’s what I found.
The number one category of programs on that night was reality shows, which is a genre of programming that documents unscripted real-life situations of an otherwise unknown cast of individuals. And, if you believe that, I have some ocean front property in Arizona. Quite frankly, I don’t really like them for the most part.
“Keeping Up With the Kardashians” was on, though I can’t for the life of me think of a single reason anyone would want to keep up with these folks. But, if you happen to be a fan and do want to keep up with them, that’s okay. It’s just that I don’t. There were any number of “The Real Housewives of Somewhere” on as well. There must be some reason these shows are on, and most likely it’s to add to the drama in life, as if there isn’t enough of that already. I catalogued seventeen different reality shows as I made my way through the channels.
And, speaking of drama, that was another popular category, but still not in the top three. The next most numerous genre was crime shows. I know, those have always been popular, but it’s pretty much reached the point of saturation. At least in my opinion.
For example, there are any number of NCIS shows based on a specific city, but “Forensic Files,” “How it Really Happened,” “Primetime Justice” and a couple of others pretty much make up the nightly programing on the Headline News Network (HLN). Then there’s Joe Kenda solving hundreds of murders in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and an entire channel called Investigative Discovery devoted to crime stories. And don’t forget 20/20 on Oprah’s network (OWN) that devotes a lot of programming to crime dramas, too. Enough of that stuff already.
The third most popular category was sports. I bet a lot of you thought that would be number one, and I wouldn’t have argued with you. As I went through the channels, I noted college football, basketball, hockey, golf, tennis, soccer, and a number of sports-related programs that had talking heads discussing them. Well, not soccer or tennis, but I didn’t stick around too long, if you get my drift. If they’re not talking about the Razorbacks or the Cowboys, I’m not that interested.
Well, that’s the top three, but I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the fourth most popular form of programming. It was just one short of the sports category, so it’s worth a mention. And that’s the news, though it seems less and less the news these days and more and more opinion disguised as news. I’m not going to touch this — just thought it was worth a mention.
There were a couple of shows on that I usually like but, really, how many hundreds of times can you watch an episode of Andy Griffith? Well, that one when Aunt Bee makes the kerosene cucumbers (aka homemade pickles), and the one when Andy comes in and catches Barney singing a song he’s written and then sings it back to him to the tune of Clementine, I wouldn’t put a limit on how many times I could watch those two. And there are a couple of newer shows that I’ve watched the reruns of the reruns, which are “Fixer Upper” and “Property Brothers.” That’s about it, though.
What I discovered in my little project is that there are too many reality programs, crime shows, sports, and news on to suit my viewing preferences. So, the best thing to do is just pop in a movie. That way you always get to watch something you like. I pretty much knew this all the time, but I wanted to do the research to confirm it. In conclusion, I really need to read more books.